The UK is Europe’s leading country for investment into startups, responsible for more VC equity fundraising in 2024 than second and third place France and Germany combined. While many assume that all of that activity is happening in London, companies in Oxford, Cambridge and Scotland are beginning to play a bigger role in the country’s growth.
Scotland now accounts for around 12% of all UK equity investment by number of deals, up from 9% two years ago, and success stories like Skyscanner and FanDuel, the country’s first two unicorns, are turning the entrepreneurial flywheel as operators feed their capital and experience back into the ecosystem.
“There's a ripple effect. There's a real richness of talent now of people that have had scaling journeys,” says Andrew McGinley, serial founder and entrepreneur in residence at ecosystem builder CodeBase, which runs the Scottish Government’s Techscaler programme to boost startup activity.
Today, the organisation is launching its latest “Techscaler Ones to Watch” list, showcasing Scotland’s most promising high-growth startups and scaleups across a broad range of verticals, from healthtech to maritime and space.
So who are Scotland’s up and coming tech giants of the future, what’s driving their growth and what do founders think needs improving to take the ecosystem up a gear?
Healthy progress
The first edition of the ones to watch list featured successful businesses like AI legaltech Wordsmith AI, which raised a $25m Series A led by Index Ventures in June. It also included GenAI optimisation startup Malted AI which raised a £6m seed led by Hoxton Ventures last year, and bootstrapped digital health platform Simple Online Healthcare, headquartered in Glasgow, which tripled its revenue to £66m last year and has expanded internationally.
Healthtech, the most heavily represented category on this year’s Ones to Watch list, is one of Scotland’s strongest tech verticals according to McGinley, who points to the success of at-home care platform Current Health (acquired by US retail giant Best Buy for £300m in 2021).
“Scotland has a proud history of medical innovation, from pioneering discoveries in the past to cutting-edge medtech companies today. That foundation gives us a unique strength to build on, and we’re starting to see a spike in medtech startup activity, supported by a wide range of initiatives,” he says, referencing the Scottish capital city’s BioQuarter, an initiative to connect industry and public health institutions.
Scotland has a proud history of medical innovation, from pioneering discoveries in the past to cutting-edge medtech companies today.
"It means innovation cycles can happen at a quicker pace because these companies are close to consultants and patients, and also medical research,” he adds.
AI talent
Another of Scottish tech’s strengths lies in its access to AI talent, thanks to top research universities in cities including Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee and Stirling.
One of CodeBase’s Techscaler Ones to Watch this year is Persi, a B2B, AI-enabled personal shopping assistant platform, which raised an oversubscribed £660k pre-seed round in May 2025.
Cofounder and CEO Olivia Parkes says the startup has benefitted from a research partnership with the University of Stirling to deepen its AI capabilities, and that she plans to build out her technical team in Scotland as she scales the company.
We want to build on these relationships and hire the tech team in Scotland when we take it in house.
“The talent up here is really strong,” she says. “We want to build on these relationships and hire the tech team in Scotland when we take it in house.”
Also on CodeBase's list is Zelim, a deeptech startup combining autonomous maritime vehicles with AI vision models to help recover people and objects at sea, which raised a £5.2m Series A in December 2024.
“Access to talent is really good,” says CEO and founder Sam Mayall. “Our tech team is based in Edinburgh and being a part of the CodeBase ecosystem has allowed us to hire great people.”
Fostering momentum
Another founder building an AI-powered business from Scotland is Edinburgh-based AskVinny, an agentic real estate management tool which is currently being used to manage more than 200k properties.
Cofounder and CEO Rory Buchanan says that CodeBase has helped him grow the startup by connecting him with local mentors, and through events that have given him access to prospective customers and influential policy shapers.
“They do an amazing job of connecting people,” he says. “Last month, I was doing a CodeBase panel with the head of Edinburgh City Council. It allowed me into the room with some of the biggest landlords in Edinburgh and I was actually budging policy by telling these public sector folks why I think they need to adopt AI more rapidly.”
Parkes, who has taken Persi through the Techscaler accelerator programme, adds that CodeBase has helped improve her links to potential investors.
There are all these opportunities that just continue to come from the Techscaler programme with CodeBase.
“There are all these opportunities that just continue to come from the Techscaler programme with CodeBase, like additional networking into angel investment groups and building my profile within the Scottish investment community,” she says.
But while CodeBase is helping to foster a supportive and vibrant tech scene in Scotland, founders agree that the ecosystem could benefit from more access to early-stage capital, and more willingness from these investors to take bets on young startups.
“Compared to the US, there's far less risk appetite in the UK, and that’s particularly true in Scotland,” says Mayall.
Although Buchanan and McGinley both agree that Scotland could benefit from more active early-stage investment into ambitious startups, they say that there’s much to be excited about when looking around the nation’s host of new companies popping up.
“We have a lot of good quality pre-seed and seed companies in our pipeline,” says McGinley. “There are great companies doing great work in that early-stage pipeline, we've got to really just help them accelerate.”
